Xero increase focus in North America

Tony Ward, President of Americas, Xero has appointed two country leaders under his control. Ward who was only appointed in May this year, clearly believes that the additional focus that these appointments will bring should help to deliver further growth. It sees the appointment of Ben Richmond to country manager in the US and Will Buckley as country manager in Canada.

Ward commented: “Both Ben and Will have already played an instrumental role in driving Xero’s adoption across the US and Canada, increasing the success of our accountants, bookkeepers and small businesses. The experiences they bring from Xero’s business in Australia and New Zealand will help Xero scale across North America, ultimately giving more small businesses and their communities the chance to prosper.

“We have a massive opportunity in front of us since less than 10% of small businesses in North America have adopted cloud accounting services, I am excited to see Ben and Will continue to break new ground in their regions, build their teams and drive new growth in their respective countries.”

Richmond will move from a role in Xero, New Zealand, to the new position. Buckley founded buckleybrown in Australia a cloud first accounting practice and Xero gold partner. Buckley is still listed as a partner at the practice.

Enterprise Times: What does this mean

As Xero has grown in North America the role of leading the country has grown. Ward is taking a sensible step to ensure that there is appropriate focus in each country. There is one surprising thing about these appointments. That is that neither are natives of the country where they will lead. Though Buckley has recently spent time in North America helping to scale technology ventures.

Xero has recently started to accelerate its growth in North America. It now has 195,000 subscribers (48% growth) and $44 million in revenue. It is a key market for the company.

Steve Brooks has worked in IT for nearly 30 years, working through different roles to CIO in a number of vertical markets including Finance, Manufacturing and Real Estate. A qualified Project Manager. He spent 17 years at Savills plc, a FTSE 250 real estate company, rising to CIO before leaving in 2012.
Steve is Director of Consultancy at Synonym Ltd and while studying at Henley Business School for his MBA was deputy editor at www.business-cloud.com, a Dods Group publication. He joined CIC as an associate consultant in 2013.
He is a member of BCS and an associate member of the Institute of Directors.